The following article is all about how to install and configure a private proxy server using Squid in your Debian 6 VPS.

Before we proceed any further, you might be asking yourself what exactly is Squid?

It is a caching proxy for the Web supporting HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and many more. It reduces bandwidth and improves response times by caching and reusing frequently-requested web pages. It also give you the ability to hide your identity and surf the web anonymously.

# apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -show-upgraded -y

Next, install the ‘squid’ server by issuing:

# apt-get install squid3 squid3-common -y

once the installation is completed you may want to run:

# apt-get autoremove -y

in order to clean the packages that are no longer required. Once that’s completed, run the below command to find out the location of ‘ncsa_auth’ helper which we will be using it for authentication purposes.

# dpkg -L squid3 | grep -w ncsa_auth /usr/lib/squid3/ncsa_auth

ok, this indicates that the auth helper is located in ‘/usr/lib/squid3/ncsa_auth’ so the next thing is to setup our Squid’s configuration file (/etc/squid3/squid.conf). Make sure you replace ‘XXX.XX.XX.XXX’ with your server’s IP address.

Source: www.virtual-server.org